If your golf game is in a midsummer slump, it’s time to try a fresh approach.

We quizzed fitness experts who work with golfers, amateurs and professionals alike. They shared their expertise on how to improve your game, increase your enjoyment of the sport and shave strokes off your score.

Here are six things to try:

Yoga

Katherine Roberts is the founder and president of the Roberts Flex-Fit method and Yoga for Golfers. She has written a book, “Swing Fault Solutions,” with Tiger Woods’ swing coach, Hank Haney, due early next year.

She started her program for golfers in 2000 and stresses how yoga can help flexibility, strength, core conditioning, balance, back strength and mental focus. “My friend, who is a sports psychologist, says golf is 90 percent mental and 10 percent psychological,” Roberts says via e-mail. She is based in Scottsdale, Ariz., and Vancouver, Britich Columbia.

Among the yoga movements she recommends are pelvic tilts, the boat pose, and the bridge pose balanced with the modified cobra and locust poses.

She says her students will see a 20 percent to 40 percent increase in their range of motion after one session. Yoga is an excellent method of improving balance, flexibility and core strength.

Instruction from the pros

Many golfers are either afraid or too stubborn to seek professional help — and we’re only talking about golf here — but there is no replacement for a good instructor. Check with your local club for an instructor who fits your needs.

“A professional helps a student and a golfer understand what they’re presently doing and what they need to be doing,” says Lana Ortega, who has been recognized as one of America’s top 50 golf teachers by several national golf publications.

Ortega, based at Family Sports Center in Centennial, says simple changes to a player’s stance, grip or aim can provide immediate results.

The right instruction gives a player a systematic way of showing the details of the golf shot, Ortega says. “If you’re sloppy with your grip or you aim 30 yards to the right, an instructor can correct that. Teaching a preshot routine is important. If we have a systematic way of getting through a shot, that will help in taking care of business and keeps you (aware of) what you don’t want to do.”

Golf instructors and places like Golfed also can analyze your swing using a computer, video or other techniques. Seeing what you are doing wrong in a photo or on video often aids in immediate improvement.

Custom club fitting

Often a player has been playing with clubs that are ill-suited for his or her game. Most golf-equipment stores and instructors provide custom club fitting.

“Every component of the golf club affects golf-ball flight, so it affects a golfer’s motion,” Ortega says. “A classic example is when a woman has a set of her husband’s old clubs that are too heavy and too stiff. The shaft won’t flex, so they change their motion to perform the swing. The line angle affects the motion, so it will change her swing. The club should be fit to a person — the shaft length, grip size, shaft stiffness — without compensating for the swing.”

Practicing smarter

This may seem like a simple idea, but it really involves “competitive practice,” as Ortega calls it. She suggests playing a game where you disregard normal scoring, pick a target and give yourself a point for every good shot and no points for a bad shot. Play the standard number of shots (three for a par 5, two for a par 4, one for a par 3) to get to the green on nine or 18 holes.

“A good dose of competitive practicing like you play is helpful,” Ortega says. “Practicing and preparing are two different things; one is loosening up, and another is trying to get a swing key for the day.”

She also advises practicing your short game first, so “that way it doesn’t get neglected.”

Physical conditioning

Neil Wolkodoff has been refining golf fitness for the past 14 years, working with golfers from the Ladies Professional Golf Association and Professional Golfers’ Association tours, and professional and amateur athletes. He has written several books on the subject and emphasizes six areas to improve that will translate to a better golf game: strength, strength endurance, core strength, balance, flexibility and acceleration patterning.

The latter, Wolkodoff says, is the “ability to slow down the body or increase the speed of the body at will, and golf relies on this ability almost more than any other sport or activity.”

Wolkodoff says golfers should stress strengthening the “back of their body” from head to toe and shouldn’t neglect the abdominals. “Golf is one of the few sports that uses all of the muscles in the body,” he says. “It requires a whole set of strength facets. Most golfers don’t have the back strength, the hip strength and the hamstring strength.”

One Wolkodoff book, “Core Powered Golf,” details dozens of exercises, using weights, a fitness ball and other methods. He also suggests “anything that works on rotational abilities” because golfers often have good flexibility, “but lack the ability to turn their spine.”

Throwing a medicine ball back and forth and side to side can promote better flexibility in the spine and the ability to turn in the golf shot, he says.

Mental conditioning

Denise McGuire is a licensed psychologist and performance specialist who works at the Mike McGetrick Golf Academy and through her website, getinthezone.net. She also writes a column on the mental game for Colorado AvidGolfer magazine and has 20-plus years of expertise.

McGuire stresses “optimal performance,” and its three aspects: mental, emotional and physiological.

“I think that golfers in general don’t know enough about how to manage their emotional reactions to the game,” McGuire says via e-mail. “My belief is that thoughts lead to emotions, which are then felt in the body. I think it’s important to be aware of all three aspects to play at your best.”

McGuire “recommends that golfers use focused breathing and visualization prior to their rounds. My students have found it to be very effective.”

In a similar vein, Ortega suggests a preshot routine to develop better concentration from beginning to end of a player’s round.

“There is a lot of value to having a preshot routine,” Ortega says. “Fear-based play is what happened in the past or will happen in the future. A lot of people don’t have a preshot routine. That would be helpful. That 30 seconds, you’re really focusing. Not only are they focused, they’re taking care of things they need to take care of, like paying attention to their aim, their stance, the wind, assessing their lie.”

Greg Henry’s handicap is down to a 15, thanks to custom clubs fitting, instruction and a golf-specific exercise routine.

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